Hello,

When trying to recall my story based on keywords, I often pick the wrong english meaning of the keyword, can't recall my story for it, and have to mark it as wrong.
Then I see the answer, and I'm like, "Oh, -that- <word>".

For example, 'Alternate (迭)', I get this image of alternating letters or colors or something, and I can't recall a thing, and then I click 'Again', and I see "Oh, it meant 'another (alternate) option', I remember the story for that one....


Uh, I hope I explained properly. How do you guys deal with this english ambiguity?

I'd come up with little hints. In your example the keyword could be "alternate (options)" to avoid confusion without giving away too much.

Yes, you can change a keyword, or add a hint to it, by clicking on it on the Study page - and re-set it to the original again later if you no longer want the hint.

One of the most valuable things I learned on this forum is: don't regard the review so much as a "test" where you "have" to get things right - because then you keep feeling bad when you get something wrong that you "knew" ... Just think of it instead as a tool for helping you learn the kanji - no matter what the reason is behind the "wrong" ones. My experience is that the kanji I keep getting wrong are the most satisfying when I've had the opportunity to review them so many times that the frustration of "Oh, that!" changes to the exhilaration of "Hah! I really know this one!"

Hmkay, so making keywords specific enough not to mess up their english meanings is just fine for the srs method. Thanks :3

If you've started learning vocabulary, you can also use the Japanese words to help you recall the kanji.

RtK is not about connecting abstract keywords to kanji, it's about learning to remember the kanji - keep that in mind.
And the SRS method is not a God which you have to obey; it's your slave.

Stian Wrote:If you've started learning vocabulary, you can also use the Japanese words to help you recall the kanji.

Yes, this. This helped me with the harder kanji more than anything else by far. And of course you learn a new word this way, so two birds. I guess the effectiveness will depend on your level, but I definitely recommend trying this at least.

Slaves, the kind where if you're intelligent you kick them in the crotch and take their money! Or if you're strict, you kick them too and throw them on the ground.

Uh, yeah, those stories work. While on topic, I tend to remember 存 when I see its counterpart 在 in my japanese keyword, and vice versa. Assuming I can treat SRS like my slave, I suppose that's also a fine way to learn?

[Zgarbas]

My only problem with the approach is that I ended up confusing them. While I'd instantly recognize 存在, I'd always forget which is which when I ran into the kanjis in other compounds (so I'd see 滞在 and assumed it was たいぞん for example). It got fixed in time, though.

So.. it would also work if I wrote down entire stories instead of just the keyword?
I read it before, but it feels, so, wrong!

Taelia Wrote:So.. it would also work if I wrote down entire stories instead of just the keyword?
I read it before, but it feels, so, wrong!

No, that wouldn't work. The point of having a story is that it's easier to remember than just the primitives alone. But if you give away the story, with the primitives in it, then you might as well forget about the story and just list the primitives in the question.

The "hint" needs to be about the keyword, not the primitives. It's actually not a hint, it's specifying what specific sense the keyword is used in, in the story. Or, if you wanna go further, you can also provide a hint about the story itself, but you shouldn't give away the primitives (the easiest way to do this is to just copy/paste the first few words of the story, so long as they don't include any of the primitives).

P.S. Regarding what I wrote in the first paragraph ("you might as well just forget about the story, and just list the primitives in the question"), I'm not implying that that would be a bad thing to do. I'm just saying that that would have very little to do with the Heisig method. But I don't know for a fact that that method would be a bad idea. It would of course lead to a much less thorough learning of the Kanji, so just doing that wouldn't be as helpful as doing the Heisig method, but I suppose it would help to some extent. The question is would it be worth doing, from a cost/benefit pov. It's hard to say.

[edit] On further thought, I could be wrong, giving the story away (in a hidden field, so you don't waste time reading it when you don't need to) might work too. Sorry about the confusing post. The "further thought" involved thinking back to my experience with this and realizing that, after a few reps, remembering the stories wasn't an issue, and the reason for failed Kanji was that I couldn't quickly write them based on the story (so I failed them instead of spending time thinking, because I found that to be more cost effective).

So, my revised advice to anyone starting out with Heisig would be to copy/paste the story in a hidden field in the question, at least for a while. See how it is working. The worst thing that could happen is that it doesn't work, in which case you can just start failing Kanji (or tag them as "hard" instead of "normal") whenever you have to use the hidden field.

Thank you, that's quite the informative reply. I'll be writing my stories to hidden fields then, for the cards I notice I'm frequently failing. That seems like a proper middle path.